From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov
Transcript for: The Recovery Act's Weatherization Assistance Funds
Audio interview by GAO staff with Frank Rusco, Director, Natural
Resources & Environment
Related GAO Work: GAO-12-195: Recovery Act: Progress and Challenges in
Spending Weatherization Funds
Released on: December 16, 2011
[ Background Music ]
[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the Government Accountability Office. It's December
16th, 2011. The Recovery Act provided $5 billion to the Department of
Energy's weatherization assistance program which makes long-term energy
efficiency improvements to the homes of low-income families. A group led
by Frank Rusco, a director in GAO's Natural Resources and Environment
team, recently reviewed the use and effects of that funding as part of
GAO's ongoing Recovery Act reporting. GAO's Jeremy Cluchey sat down with
Frank to learn more.
[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] How are these weatherization grants being used?
[ Frank Rusco: ] The weatherization program at DOE has been going on for
a long time, and the program gives money to states and other recipients
to weatherize homes. That means putting caulking around windows,
sometimes replacing windows, putting in insulation, sometimes even
bigger things. For the Recovery Act, they had enough money that they
could also weatherize multifamily housing in some cases.
[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Nearly $5 billion worth of Recovery Act funds were
awarded to implement this program. What's the current status of those
grants?
[ Frank Rusco: ] The vast proportion of that money has been allocated to
states and most of it is expected to be spent by March 31st, which is
the deadline set by DOE for the spending of this money. Currently, about
73 percent has been spent, and with that money the program is expecting
to weatherize over the 607,000 homes that it was targeted to do.
[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Can you expand on that in terms of how the
weatherization program has achieved its goals so far?
[ Frank Rusco: ] Yes, so the weatherization's goals typically are to
reduce energy use in low-income housing. And there is a study done by
the Oak Ridge National Lab and it's a preliminary study that shows that
for every dollar spent in weatherization, they're expecting over the
lifetime of the weatherization investments $2 in energy savings. That
study is going to be completed in 2 years and will have more definitive
results at that time.
[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your team also looked at the sorts of challenges
that grant recipients have encountered in implementing this program. Can
you talk about what you found there?
[ Frank Rusco:] Yes, the challenges were greater at the beginning. There
was a big increase in the amount of funding for this program, and so
getting set up to spend that money in an efficient way with proper
oversight took some time. It took time for the agency to provide
guidance to the states, and it took time for the states to train workers
and then also to establish what would be a good market wage, an
appropriate market wage as required by the Recovery Act for these
workers. Challenges going on after the money runs out, as it will
sometime in 2012, the size of the program then will shrink dramatically,
and there's a lot of workers out there now currently trained to do this
work. If that funding is not there, they'll have to find something else
to do. That's a big challenge. I think in addition, the states are
facing challenges in sort of wrapping the program up and doing that in a
timely fashion and meeting the deadline that DOE has currently set.
[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] This report is part of GAO's ongoing work looking at
Recovery Act funding and its use and its impact. For taxpayers
interested in how that funding has been used, what's the bottom line
here?
[ Frank Rusco: ] Well, as I said, this program is expected to exceed its
targets of weatherizing 607,000 homes. That's good news. They were able
to spend most of the money in a reasonably short amount of time. If the
preliminary studies, the Oak Ridge Lab, are fully validated after the
study is completed, it looks like it was money that had a positive
return. That's pretty good news.
[ Background Music ]
[ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO's website at gao.gov and be sure
to tune in to the next edition of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from
the congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.